Sunday, March 17, 2013

We got up early the following morning to prepare for a long
day of field work. We had some ambitious plans: we were to check out three of
Doug Emlong’s fossil localities, all in one day. This included an area south of
Depoe Bay,
and the well-known Moloch (pronounced Moolack) Beach north of the Newport
Lighthouse. These localities are all exposures of various units deposited
within the mid-Cenozoic Newport embayment, an ancient basin that occupied what
is now the central Oregon coastline, from Waldport to Lincoln City (or further;
I’m unclear as to the limits of the depositional package, but it certainly does
not continue to Astoria, as mid-cenozoic rocks in this region are considered
part of the Astoria embayment). Marine rocks in coastal Oregon
have yielded a substantial assemblage of fossil marine mammals, among other
marine (and terrestrial vertebrates). Indeed, we owe much of our knowledge of
marine vertebrates from this time and place to the dogged perseverance (if not
outright obsession or addiction) of Emlong, and other collectors who followed
him like Guy Pierson and James and Gail Goedert. The three formations we
visited were the ‘middle’ Oligocene Yaquina Formation, the late Oligocene-early
Miocene Nye Mudstone, and the late early-early middle Miocene Astoria
Formation. FYI, some paleontologists – myself included prior to this trip –
assume that it’s Spanish in origin and pronounced “Yakeena”. Turns out it’s
pronounced “Yakwinna”, and it’s named after the nearly extinct Yaquina Indians;
an alternate spelling of their language is actually Yakwina. Anyway, now you
know. There’s a Yaquina bay, Yaquina Formation, and the Yaquina lighthouse.

Ray and I discuss the finer points of desmostylian posture while Kirk does something practical.

Ray and I are still discussing desmostylian posture while waiting for a table at the Otis Cafe.

The spouting horn at Depoe bay, Oregon. We stopped to check this out on our way to the localities.

Before we left for the field, we drove from the Sitka
Center to the local favorite ‘Otis
Café’. Over an enormous breakfast consisting of the world’s best fench toast
and bacon, Ray, Kirk, Sarah, and I discussed the intricacies of reconstructing
the posture of desmostylians. Frank Boyden joined us a little late for
breakfast. On a whim, Kirk asked the waitress if she knew who Emlong was – and
as it turned out, her sister had been a girlfriend of Emlong’s. Apparently, he
had asked her out after high school, and she wasn’t interested. He tried again
after he got his first payment for his Smithsonian collecting job (which he
started in 1967), and bought a car – and then she went out with him. I made
sure to buy a T-shirt from the establishment before we left Lincoln
County.

Kirk and I put together a plan for the day at our first stop.

Although we didn't find any fossils, a walk on the beach is likely to turn up all sorts of evidence of modern dead critters - a tufted puffin carcass, in this case. We spotted about a dozen seabird carcasses, including several puffins (Fratercula), murres (Uria), and cormorants (Phalacrocorax).

Kirk has a habit of scampering up the nearest promontory.

Another puffin.

Our first stop was the Yaquina Formation. Emlong collected a
number of significant fossils from the Yaquina – by far the most important of
which is the type and only known specimen of the toothed mysticete Aetiocetus
cotylalveus (not cotylaveus). The holotype skeleton was collected by
Emlong in March 1964, and includes a well preserved skull, most of a vertebral
column (39 vertebrae), 23 ribs, several loose teeth, part of a sternum, and
several chevrons. Emlong originally considered it to be an archaeocete, given
the presence of teeth and the lack of derived mysticete features. The
remarkable thing is that Emlong, with zero technical background in paleontology
– with encouragement from J. Arnold Shotwell and Remington Kellogg – described
and named the fossil himself, in his only publication – less than two years
after the fossil was dug out of the rock on the beach. It was later identified
by Leigh Van Valen as a primitive baleen whale (but I’ll talk about that in a
separate post). Other finds from the Yaquina Formation included the holotype of
the primitive desmostylian Behemotops emlongi, named after Emlong (later
synonymized with Behemotops proteus from the Olympic Peninsula in
Washington; this taxon is sort of the “Pakicetus” of desmostylians), and
skulls and mandibles of the more derived desmostylian (with a fabulous name) Cornwallius
sookensis, which were eventually described by my good friend and colleage
Brian Beatty (the species was originally named from the Sooke Formation on
Vancouver Island, British Columbia). Lastly, the early pinniped Enaliarctos
tedfordi was described from this locality by Annalisa Berta in 1991. Emlong
collected the holotype of this specimen – a complete skull – in 1964. We looked
around for about a half hour, and didn’t find a damn thing. Then again, the
sand level was pretty high.

Sarah at Moloch Beach with the Astoria Formation in the background.

We moved to the next locality, a couple miles north – to
examine additional outcrops of the Yaquina Formation and the late
Oligocene-early Miocene Nye Mudstone. This was near the type locality of Enaliarctos
mitchelli, which is from right around the Oligo-Miocene boundary. There was
plenty of fossilized wood – probably limonitized or mildly pyritized, as
indicated in Emlong’s paper. That’s about all that we found in either the
Yaquina or the Nye, though. Despite a long history of important fossil
discoveries from this locality, I was beginning to get disappointed with how
poorly fossiliferous the localities were – I’m used to fossil localities in
central California where literally hundreds of bones, teeth, and bone fragments
are found for every skull that is recovered – and on a single trip, a hundred vertebrate
fossils can be found after less than an hour of looking. We had visited two
localities that had yielded several holotype specimens each, and not found a
shred of bone.

Sarah wading through a field of mostly unfossilferous boulders.

Kirk attempting to crack a concretion the old fashioned way.

We left, hoping that a trip to Moloch beach would prove to
yield some better vertebrate material. Moloch beach has an extensive exposure
of the early middle Miocene Astoria Formation – which yielded one of the
earliest discovered fossil marine mammals from the west coast – Desmatophoca
oregonensis, an earlier relative of the large sea-lion like phocoid Allodesmus
kernensis. Later, Remington Kellogg and Earl Packard described a new type
of baleen whale from Moloch beach, which they named Cophocetus oregonensis.
Later, several new pinnipeds were described from the Astoria Formation by Larry
Barnes and colleagues: Pteronarctos goedertae, Pteronarctos piersoni,
Pacificotaria hadromma, and Proneotherium repenningi; all of
these, except P. goedertae, were found at Moloch beach. Subsequently,
two more fossil pinnipeds were described from the Astoria Formation: Enaliarctos
emlongi (possibly from the Nye Mudstone – near the Nye/Astoria contact) and
the tiny phocoid Pinnarctidion rayi. These two were from a separate
locality – where the bizarre “oyster bear” Kolponomos newportensis was
discovered (…also by Emlong). Oddly enough, Enaliarctos emlongi is one
of only two pinnipeds from that locality that don’t begin with P.

Some beautiful bivalves from the Astoria Formation.

We found a few chunks of rolled bone fragments – but nothing
really interesting. Fossil localities with marine mammals are usually pretty
easy to prospect – because whales are freaking huge, and have huge bones. It’s
usually not hard to find vertebrae and ribs of baleen whales, and again, I was
struck by how rare vertebrate remains were. Sure, there were some nice mollusks
– but compared to fossil localities in California, like the Purisima Formation
at Capitola where there are tons of beautiful mollusks littering the beach –
the Astoria at Moloch beach was sort of average in terms of the number of
invertebrates. After an hour or two of searching, I finally spotted a huge bone
– the first in situ specimen at the locality. It was a large (~1.5 meter long)
mandible of a baleen whale, perhaps something like Cophocetus. It’s
technically legal to collect concretions from the Oregon
coast with vertebrate remains in them – but not to dig bones out from the
cliffs or wave cut bench. None of this detracts from Emlong’s legacy – in fact,
the inability of three vertebrate paleontologists and several amateurs to find
much of anything at any locality after a day of winter field work only makes
his discoveries more amazing. My suspicion – and Kirk Johnson’s – is that
Emlong capitalized on the fact that concretions sit around for a long time, and
nobody before him collected vertebrate bearing concretions in such a systematic
manner. There must have been concretions which had accumulated on the beach for
thousands of years, and Emlong and subsequent collectors have effectively
collected most of that ‘lag’ of concretions, leaving little for current visitors.

Ray sketching Kent Gibson's billfish.

After leaving the beach, we visited the nearby home of local
amateur fossil collector Kent Gibson, who had found a partial billfish skull in
a concretion at Moloch beach (possibly from the Nye Mudstone). It’s some sort
of a huge Aglyptorhynchus-like billfish. Kent
had an impressive collection, including a beautiful little pinniped skull that
could be fairly important, if it were prepared and placed within a museum
collection. Ray – being a fish guy – was wanting to see the billfish and other
specimens. Upon arriving at Kent’s
house, we saw a yard littered with fossils. Ray borrowed some sidewalk chalk
from Kent’s
kids and started drawing an outline of the billfish’s body as it would have
appeared in life, to scale, with the fossil in place. Altogether it was pretty
neat. But, we were getting hungry and Frank Boyden had invited us to dinner at
his awesome cabin, decorated with his artwork and the artwork of others. Frank
showed us some parts of his collection, including original prints by late 19th
century French ‘bohemian’ artist Odilon Redon. At one point, Frank needed to
install a railing in his house – instead of installing any old railing, he went
to the beach, got a stalk of bull kelp, and casted in bronze – and it is one of
the coolest damn things I’ve ever seen. Frank showed us his printmaking studio,
which was spectacular, and useful for me as an artist to learn about more
involved artistic methods – pencil and paper is my bag, because it’s simple and
primitive (and dirt cheap).

Frank's "cell phone"

We never got a break, even during dinner: Frank had all sorts of bits of animal skeletons. Here kirk and I puzzle over a large fish skull.

Yum!

I don't remember what was going on here.

Next up: behind the scenes at the Oregon
coast aquarium, Sea Lion
Caves, and the conclusion of the
trip

Sunday, March 3, 2013

A little while ago I realized that I had totally forgotten
to talk about our trip to Oregon
with Kirk Johnson and Ray Troll last February. I can’t believe it’s been a year
already; after our trip to Oregon,
my wife and I only had two weeks to finish packing for our three year trip to New
Zealand, so I know exactly why I neglected
to post about this earlier. Kirk and Ray are working on a new book project,
sort of a sequel to “Cruisin the Fossil Freeway”, which was a combination of
science, humor, Ray’s awesome art, and the tale of a huge road trip across the
American west. This new project changes the focus from the western interior to
the Pacific coast of North America – the new book project is titled “Cruisin
the Eternal Coastline”, and deals with fossils from Baja California to Barrow,
Alaska. Kirk and Ray received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2011 to begin leg work
for the project. I first met the dynamic duo in October 2011, literally the day
after I found out I had been accepted into the Geology Ph.D. program here at
Otago. I showed the guys some of the fossils from my collection, which at the
time I was still studying and curating (and are now all in UCMP
collections). The next day, we visited a bunch of fossil localities in Santa
Cruz, and visited a large mural by Ray at the Long
Marine Lab in Santa Cruz.

Ray and Kirk got into contact with me because of my interest
in west coast fossil vertebrates – specifically marine vertebrates. Granted,
there are all sorts of spectacular land mammal localities as well (and even
non-Cenozoic localities, but I won’t dare talk about those…), but the eastern
North Pacific margin is home to one of the most extensively sampled marine
vertebrate assemblages on earth. The majority of this record is from the coasts
of California and Oregon.
Ray and Kirk sent me an invitation to join them in coastal Oregon,
to track down some of the haunts and old localities of one of my biggest
paleontological heroes – Doug Emlong. The guys were even able to cover our
travel expenses with their fellowship! Sarah and I left San
Francisco, and headed up I-5 and reached Grant’s Pass
by midnight. We left early the next
morning, having to make it to the Overlook Motel in Lincoln
City by 1pm. We just barely had
time to take a short detour off Highway 20 to head south to Toledo
to visit the type locality of Simocetus rayi, which was described by
Ewan Fordyce (my Ph.D. adviser) in 2002. We followed the locality description by my advisor –
which is effectively the same as Emlong’s notes. I’m not sure what has happened
in the area, but there weren’t any cliffs or exposures of the Alsea Formation
anywhere within a mile or two of the indicated point. It’s possible that
exposures along the river are now overgrown – as I’ve seen with all sorts of
localities in Humboldt County, California.

The type locality of Simocetus rayi - or, somewhere nearby it. Emlong's notes weren't always accurate, and there don't really appear to be any fossiliferous outcrops in the vicinity. Or, any outcrops at all. If there once were cliffs here, they have long since grown over with vegetation.

We finally made it to the motel with ten minutes to spare,
just in time for Ray and Kirk’s talk on “Cruisin the Fossil Freeway”. They go
on book tours, and have a ~40 minute presentation version of the book – and
it’s a real hoot. I had seen it previously at the Bone Room in Berkeley during
their bay area leg of the trip in October 2011; it was great, except for the
fact that a member of the audience who knew a bit about fossils muttered to
themselves and nodded agreement or verbally confirmed everything that came out
of Ray or Kirk’s mouths – which was a bit irritating. The attendance at their
talk in Lincoln City,
however, was enormous – well over a hundred (maybe even two hundred) people
showed up, which was phenomenal (both speakers were impressed with the
turnout). After the talk, we met all sorts of locals interested in fossils,
rocks, and paleontology – and spent at least another hour chatting with folks
before leaving the motel. We met several local private collectors, as well as
some members of the fossil club “NARG”, who I had heard about for years – they
have the oddly non-specific title “North American Research Group”, but they are
a seriously organized group of amateurs who are actually able to acquire
permits from the state of Oregon to collect, prepare, and curate fossils into
various permanent collections. And they do it all as volunteer work; several
years ago, they collected a huge balaenopterid mysticete skull from the Empire
Formation of Oregon; it’s still under preparation.

I also got to meet the esteemed Frank Boyden of the Sitka
Center for Art and Ecology, north
of Lincoln City;
the center was established in 1970 by Frank and his wife Jane as a
residency program for artists, scholars, and academics, with a humble beginning
as a summer camp. Upon arriving at the motel, I learned that the talk was being
sponsored by the Sitka Center.
Frank is a fascinating person to talk to – warm, eccentric, talented,
hospitable, and a total luddite. I knew we had some sort of accommodation, but
this was one of those things that I had barely planned: Sarah and I were busy
as hell with preparations for the move to the southern hemisphere, and Ray and
Kirk had told me that everything was taken care of. I guess I was expecting a
hotel room somewhere. What I didn’t realize was that Frank was graciously
putting us up in some of the cabins at the Sitka
Center – Kirk and Ray had their
own, and Sarah and I had another. It was a wonderful surprise, totally out of left field. They’re these incredible “sea ranch style”
cabins in the Oregon rainforest (sea ranch architecture will be familiar to
anyone who’s spent any time on the central or northern California coastline,
especially along Highway 1 in Sonoma and Marin Counties). I remember asking Ray whether or not
we’d have wireless internet, and Ray reminded me that “Frank has a rock with painted
buttons on it for a cell phone.” That was a good enough answer, I suppose. I should have remembered, because earlier at the talk I remember somebody asking him about a cell phone number and he gleefully pulled out his rock "phone".

To finish our first day of the trip, we tracked down the
place where Douglas Emlong died. Using the police report deposited within the
Emlong archive at the USNM, we tracked down the exact spot to a small ledge off
the side of the road on the Otter Crest Loop between Depoe
Bay and Newport,
Oregon, just a few hundred yards north of
the overlook parking lot. Emlong was a troubled person, and clearly suffered
from some psychological issues. There is evidence of obsessive-compulsive
disorder, or perhaps bipolar disorder – I’ve had many friends suffering from
either, but Emlong’s case seems to have been more severe. He tended to quickly
spend money he received from the Smithsonian, and in correspondence with
Clayton Ray, he reacted rather extremely after learning that the Smithsonian
was unable to appropriate enough funding to continue paying him (sometime
around 1977-1978). In June 1980, Emlong returned empty handed from a trip to
southern California, and after
being back in Newport for less than
24 hours, leapt to his death off a cliff adjacent to the Otter Crest Loop. We
only thought it fitting to make a pilgrimage to where the troubled genius met
his end.

Douglas Emlong's last view. Not a bad one, in my opinion.

Ray, Kirk, and others reflecting on where Douglas Emlong met his end.

My wife looking down the cliff - it's about a five hundred foot plunge to the Pacific below.

Number of visits

About the Coastal Paleontologist

I'm a paleontologist and adjunct faculty at College of Charleston in South Carolina, with research interests in Cenozoic marine vertebrates with an emphasis on marine mammals (whales, dolphins, pinnipeds, otters, sea cows, and others), but I willingly entertain brief distractions into the worlds of marine birds, sharks, and fish. My M.S. (2011, MSU-Bozeman) focused on marine vertebrate taphonomy whilst my Ph.D. (2015, U. Otago, NZ) focused on Oligocene baleen whales from New Zealand. Current research is concerned with fossil cetaceans from South Carolina including Oligocene eomysticetids, toothed mysticetes, and archaic dolphins.